If you’ve gotten this far in the book, you are very familiar with all the ins and outs of using Crystal Reports Basic. You also know that although Crystal Reports Basic can create powerful reporting solutions, it has features removed from it that users of the standalone Crystal Reports product expect. This includes robust reporting components and an object model that gives you unlimited runtime customization. When you find that you are trying to build reporting solutions that Crystal Reports Basic won’t allow, it is time to look at upgrading to the stand-alone version of Crystal Reports 2008. With the release of Crystal Reports 2008, you no longer have to choose which version you need to buy. There is only a single version and it includes the .NET 2008 developer upgrade that you need.
If you are using the older version of Crystal Reports XI, the code in this chapter will work for you as well. However, you need to download the free update called Release 2, or just R2 for short.
Crystal Reports 2008 is a powerful reporting solution for all types of developers. Developers with prior experience programming Crystal Reports with other development tools (VB6, VC++, Delphi, etc.) are probably familiar with integrating the Report Designer Component (RDC) with their application. This has been phased out and is no longer available with Crystal Report 2008.
When upgrading to Crystal Reports 2008, there are two ways you can use it.
Use .NET with Crystal Reports 2008 reports: After installing Crystal Reports 2008, your .NET application is upgraded so that it can open and print reports built with Crystal Reports 2008. The .NET IDE is still limited to creating less feature-rich reports, but they will be compatible with Crystal Reports 2008 as well. To build the most advanced reports, you will have to use the Crystal Reports 2008 stand-alone report writer separately and only use .NET for opening them within your application.
Although installing Crystal Reports 2008 upgrades the underlying libraries to be compatible with the latest reports, there are only a few minor changes made within the IDE (e.g. printing a histrogram chart, exporting to editable Word). You won’t notice any significant changes to the report designer in Visual Studio after installing Crystal Reports 2008 and for the most part it will all appear the same.
Upgrade to Crystal Report 2008 RAS: The RAS (Report Application Server) is a library that adds the ability to dynamically modify reports during runtime. It has an API (application programming interface) which exposes many methods and properties that you can access from your .NET application. The RAS can either be integrated into your .NET application or it can be run on a stand-alone server and work directly with the Business Ojbects enterprise software.
Upgrading to Crystal Reports 2008
Before looking at the different upgrade options with Crystal Reports, you first have to install it on your computer. This is easy to do, but you have to be careful. There are a few things that you need to be aware of to make the process go smoothly. This includes making sure you have the correct version of Crystal Reports and making sure you install the tools in the correct order.
For Crystal Reports 2008 to work with .NET, you have to install the tools in the proper order. Failing to do so results means that your .NET appliations won’t be compatible with Crystal Reports 2008. You must install Crystal Reports 2008 AFTER Visual Studio .NET has been installed. When the stand-alone version of Crystal Reports is installed, it looks for an existing copy of Visual Studio .NET on your computer. If it finds Visual Studio .NET, it overwrites the default .NET components with the upgraded versions. These upgraded components give you new features and more functionality that make .NET compatible with Crystal Reports 2008 reports.
If you unknowingly installed .NET after installing Crystal Reports, then you have to reinstall Crystal Reports again. Visual Studio .NET doesn’t look for an existing copy of Crystal Reports on your computer. Even if it did, there is nothing that it could do differently because the upgraded components are included on the Crystal Reports installation CD. There is no way for .NET to install them.
If you later decide not to use Crystal Reports on your computer anymore, uninstalling it will corrupt the .NET reporting components. Uninstalling removes the upgraded components from your computer, but doesn’t replace them with the original .NET components. The only way to get them back is to reinstall Visual Studio .NET and select Repair. This restores the reporting components to their original state prior to installing the stand-alone version of Crystal Reports.
